The existence of high-speed personal Internet connections and the use of the World Wide Web for commerce, entertainment and education provide significant benefits to users of the Internet. The wide-spread, low-cost and continuous availability of web-based information services has spawned changes ranging from new business models to facilitating access to government and education services, to the rapid and free exchange of ideas and information for all members of the Internet community.
Traditionally, devices communicating with the World Wide Web were computers. The computers operated “browser” software thereon to communicate with remote computers and servers connected to the World Wide Web. However, recently, a new class of devices is being developed to perform transactions with these web-based information services. In particular, personal digital assistants, mobile phones, office PCs and home entertainment systems provide pervasive computing systems allowing access to the services on the World Wide Web.
Pervasive computing provides access to relevant information stored on powerful networks, allowing them to easily take action anywhere, anytime. These new intelligent appliances or “smart devices” are embedded with microprocessors that allow users to plug into intelligent networks and gain direct, simple, and secure access to both relevant information and services. These devices may be as simple to use as calculators, telephones or kitchen toasters. They are also known as pervasive computing devices. Pervasive computing simplifies life by combining open standards-based applications with everyday activities.
However, there are issues with interfacing these pervasive computing devices with services provided through the Internet. For example, an e-commerce application operating through the Internet must properly communicate with each device in accordance with the device's protocols for communications, display, interfacing and other parameters.
Technologies, such as servlets, Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) and Java Server Pages (JSPs), enable modular development of software for e-commerce applications to consider these issues. However, e-commerce applications utilizing these technologies should still consider issues such as:                1. Providing common server components that can process requests from various Internet clients or internal processes, such as a web browser operating on a personal computer, a web-enabled mobile phone or an internal job scheduler;        2. Separating business logic from views, so that business logic may be reused in other applications;        3. Establishing transaction and access limits to maintain data integrity and maximum transaction throughput;        4. Providing common interface to the clients but allowing different implementations of the business logic based on the need of an individual store in an electronic mall; and        5. Providing a system and method for distributed commercial transaction processing.        
Accordingly, there is a need to provide an e-commerce system, wherein a common platform is provided which can accommodate various display interface and reporting requirements for various devices accessing the system.